Page 28 of The Delta’s Rogue (Crescent Lake #4)

“Little Rogue… Little Rogue…”

Fingers trail down my neck and across my collarbone. My eyelids try to lift, but they’re heavy. Too heavy. Like a dumbbell is attached to each of my lashes.

“Little Rogue…” the words repeat, the chanted nickname taunting me and haunting me.

My eyes yearn to open, to glimpse the speaker, but unconsciousness clings to me like smoke from a campfire. I need to open them, though. I need to see him .

The caress of fingertips continues to zigzag across my chest, lower and lower with each pass. A shudder runs through me from the rough feel of the hand touching me.

My brow wrinkles as I frown. My brain works to reconcile the harsh fingers touching me with the warm, soothing voice in my mind and the gentle, calming gray eyes that go with it.

“Wakey, wakey, Little Rogue.”

That jolts me from my stupor. That harsh, grating voice. Discordant and brash, and not at all belonging to the male I picture in my mind, who’s lived in my dreams for the last four years.

My eyes fly open and clash with the cold, cruel gaze of Gold Tooth, and the memories barrel into me.

The club. The alley. The syringe filled with wolfsbane and a sedative, and Goddess only knows what else .

“ ?No me llames así! ” I yell, my knee-jerk response whenever anyone utters that nickname.

Only he can call me that. Nadie más . No one else.

But my words come out muffled from the combination of the hoarseness in my throat and a gag shoved into my mouth, preventing me from speaking. I try to yank it out, but I can’t lift my arms. They’re trapped at my sides.

A scream builds in my throat, and I tug again, straining to move my arms, using every last bit of power left in me, desperate to access even a drop of my strength.

The wolfsbane they dosed me with was potent, but I don’t know how long it’s been since they gave it to me. There’s a chance—a possibility, a sliver of hope—that it’s been long enough for me to break one arm free and tear this gag from my mouth.

But it’s no use. The dosage was too high. My limbs feel floppy and useless, like soggy, overcooked noodles.

I shut my eyes for two beats. One breath in, one breath out. I shut out the noises—the laughter, the voices, the almost-too-quiet music—and focus on myself, on feeling and sensing my surroundings and my situation.

Silver cuffs wrap around my wrists and ankles, binding me to a cot or a gurney of some sort.

The metal is so cold against my skin it burns, sizzling through the top layer of my flesh.

I swallow back the whimper of pain, and as my throat expands, it brushes against a silver collar wrapped around my neck.

The zap of the icy burn forces my eyes open as I gasp, body jerking as I attempt to sit.

But the collar is secured to the gurney, helping to keep me immobilized.

My fingers scrape on the surface as I once again work to free my limbs so I can yank the collar from my throat.

I twist my head side to side, but all that does is exacerbate the freezing, burning pain from the silver restraints.

One breath in. One breath out, I remind myself. Focus. Focus.

I halt my movements again, angling my chin as best I can to survey myself.

My clothes are gone, save for my bra and underwear.

The cold air tiptoes across my bare skin like pinpricks of ice piercing into each of my pores, driving home the awareness of my exposed vulnerability and magnifying the freezing pain from the silver binding my neck, arms, and legs .

My chest heaves, and my heart pounds, rattling in an unsteady rhythm of panic against my ribs.

They stripped me down while I was unconscious. They could have done anything to me, and I would have no memory of it.

Tears spring to my eyes. I fight harder against the restraints binding me to the gurney, fueled by the panic, fear, and frustration rising from my gut like bubbling magma. The thought of anyone touching me—anyone other than him —sets my gut roiling and sends a ripple of disgust and rage through me.

My body flails, hips swiveling as I struggle. Grunts and screams grate in my throat throughout my fight, the sounds loud even with the gag shoved into my mouth.

Everything in me rebels against my current situation. Everything in me is desperate to break free. But it’s useless. Futile. There’s too much silver holding me down.

I breathe through my nose as the panic and fear settle into my bones.

Those emotions carve their names into the surface, creating an unending, cavernous ache inside me.

The rhythmic breaths do nothing to dispel the yawning chasm of anguish and desperation threatening to devour me, and I can no longer shut out my surroundings.

Laughter, raucous and cruel, rings in my ears. Wind skates over metal, and tires spin beneath me, rolling over a bumpy gravel road.

“She needs more wolfsbane,” someone I can’t see says, his loud, strident voice like sandpaper against my senses. “That scrape on her cheek healed. That means her wolf isn’t blocked enough.”

“Give her one without the sedative, though,” Gold Tooth replies. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. It will haunt my dreams, twisting them into nightmares. “We’re at the warehouse. She’ll want her examined, and we need her awake for that.”

The squealing of brakes and the jostling of the vehicle punctuate his words as the driver carelessly shifts into park, and I tense, bracing myself for the jolt through the gurney that’s sure to follow.

Gold Tooth grips it, holding it steady, and Eye Patch leans over me, leering at me with a syringe in hand.

I shake my head frantically, ignoring the icy burn of the silver. “No. Nonono. Por favor ,” I beg, though my words are just a jumble of sounds through the gag. I tug and pull and heave against the cuffs, my back arching off the surface .

They laugh. Their eyes, colder and crueler than the silver burning my flesh, scan my body as their gazes linger on my heaving chest, where my breasts strain against my unpadded black bra. My stomach curdles, and I glare at them.

Pagarás por esto , I think, shooting daggers at them with my eyes, still squirming and trying to pull away. They’ll pay for this.

Eye Patch lowers the syringe towards my neck, and I revolt, twisting my head as fast as possible so he can’t find a spot to insert the needle.

Gold Tooth snarls, grabs my hair, and tugs—hard—angling my head up and to the side.

I choke, the silver collar pressing into the front of my throat at the rough hold, and the tears pooling in my eyes fall unbidden down my cheeks.

Someone else presses their hands into my torso, pinning me down, so other than my heaving chest and brief twitches of my arms and legs, I’m immobile.

The needle pricks my neck, and I squeeze my eyes shut, breathing through it all.

The searing, acidic pain hits my veins as the wolfsbane enters my bloodstream.

The silver touching my skin burns cold yet hot, and as I strain against the hold on my body, an aching anguish reflects the exhaustion of my muscles.

All of it, however, is inconsequential compared to the heart-wrenching, isolating agony I’ve carried in my soul all these years.

That pain is buried deep within my being and will only be eased by one event—by one person.

“There.” Eye Patch yanks the syringe from my skin. “That should help.”

Gold Tooth chuckles gruffly, and the hands on my torso roam, ascending from my belly and descending from my chest to meet in the middle, on my breasts.

Bile rises in my throat. They touched me through my clothes when they cornered me in the alley, but this is different. I’m more exposed, more vulnerable than I was then, and I’m helpless to stop it.

The wolfsbane courses through my veins, pushed along by my racing heart into the tips of my toes and the pads of my fingers. My limbs fill with lead, and my struggling slows to the pace of a snail until fighting takes more effort than it’s worth. I inhale shakily, waiting for the unwanted touches.

But they never come .

I dare to peek through a half-opened eyelid. Above me, Crooked Nose’s hands hover a hair away from touching my skin. They shake, and he twitches, but he can’t move them further.

“You know the rules,” a silky, distant voice says from near my feet. “No touching them until we know their status.”

I lift my chin as much as I can and find a cruelly beautiful female standing at the end of the gurney. Her ash-brown hair falls in large, glamorous waves around her face and shoulders.

She stares right at me, her perceptive honey-brown eyes cutting through my skin like lashes from a whip. A smirk grows on her face, and her features sharpen as she scrutinizes me, examining me with the keenness and intensity of a hawk.

“Nuncio groped her when we caught her,” Crooked Nose says, his voice slicing through the thick silence.

Her wicked gaze slides from me to him, brow lifting. “Did he now?” Those vicious eyes flick to Gold Tooth—Nuncio—on the other side of the gurney, and her smirk drops. “Did you touch her?”

“I had to touch her to catch her.” His voice is casual, but his body tenses. “She ran. She’s a feisty one.”

“But did you touch her?” Her pitch lowers and fills with an ember of exasperation. “No, don’t answer that.” Her gaze flicks back to me, that pitiless, inhuman smile returning. “I’ll ask her.”

She strolls closer, fingertips trailing the edge of the gurney. She keeps her hands off me, and yet I feel the absence of her touch as intensely as if she was scraping her long, painted nails over my skin.

She leans over me, and her hand cups my cheek. Her palm is colder than the silver wrapping around my extremities. I flinch, but I don’t pull away. I don’t let her glimpse my fear. Although she can probably sense it, the predator that she is.